Is this the ultimate Ferrari group test?

As we were plotting this summit – and it wasn’t easy – the working title was “bloodline”, but actually “continuum” is probably better. Because, as we watch these four sainted cars being decanted from their transporter, it’s a reminder that the LaFerrari is part of a continually unfolding mythology, the best and purest in the business. Porsche gets close, but the operatic Italians edge the German technocrats when it comes down to it.

The LaFerrari’s chassis uses various grades of carbon fibre in different areas of the car; some of it is so specialised only the very latest fighter jets feature it, while the nuclear industry reinforces the centrifuges in which it enriches uranium with another strain. Heady stuff. But the new Ferrari hypercar owes just as much to its four predecessors. To find out how Maranello got here, you have to start by going back there, 30 years in fact, to 1984’s 288 GTO.